Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG)- The search giant announced that it will be killing off the notification centre in its Chrome browser for both Apple’s Mac OS X and Microsoft’s Windows 10.
Did you know that Chrome has had a notification center since 2013? If not, then it’s no surprise, you’re probably part of the majority of users who also had no idea. Of course, there are also many that were aware but chose to never use the specific feature. What it does is that it provides notifications from web pages with Google Now info.
However, it seems that only a handful of people – practically close to no one – actually used this feature, so Google will remove it to streamline the desktop experience. In its Chromium blog, it says specifically:
“In some cases, these desktop notifications would appear while users were gone, so in 2013 Chrome launched the notification center, a place for users to find notifications from Chrome apps and extensions that they’d missed. However, in practice, few users visit the notification center. To keep Chrome simple, it will be removed from Windows, Mac, and Linux in the upcoming release. The notification center on Chrome OS will remain unchanged. […] Notifications sent solely to the notification center will now result in an error, and API events tied to the center will no longer fire. All other notifications will continue to work without requiring any changes.”
So as you read, notifications will still exist. In fact, earlier this year, Chrome started supporting a new web standard for push notifications from websites. But the only difference is that you won’t be able to Google Now content on your computer.
The change has begun, as Google has already removed Google Now info from the ChromeOS out of the notification center and packed them into a new app launcher that combines search, Google Now, and your frequently-used apps.
What remains to be seen now is whether Linux, Mac and Windows users will be given a new way to access Google Now info.
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